


As air

by baffledking



Category: Marvel 1602
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-25
Updated: 2007-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-26 07:38:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/280467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baffledking/pseuds/baffledking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Air is Free. Lady Susan Storm could not have been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As air

Susan Storm first met Richard Reed when she was twelve and he was barely twenty and not yet sir anything. He was admitted a genius even then, visiting her aunt and uncle as to study a geographical oddity near their country home. John was only ten, but even had he not been, he would like have watched Richard with the same confusion their aunt and uncle politely displayed as the young man explained the results of his study animatedly over dinner. Susan listened with no less confusion, but went to the tiny library her uncle's home boasted after dinner, staying late into the night and reading by candlelight.

Her uncle had professed shock Susan could read and write when Susan and John had come to live with them following their father's death. Susan didn't know how to tell her that it had been the only way she and John had been able to keep themselves as well as they had as their father spiraled into drunkenness and debt. She had forged more than one letter with her father's name in the penmanship she had learned at her mother's side in the weeks before Mrs. Storm had died. Her father had taught his wife in the days before his grief destroyed him.

Susan woke before the sun on the first full day of Richard Reed's visit, dashing down to the stables in her shrift.

"Michael Smith, come out here," she ordered in a tone she had tried to make as much like her aunt's as possible. It was even moderately successful.

The young man stumbled out of the stall he slept in, straw tangled in his dirty brown hair, "Quiet yer- Oh, pardon, Mistress Storm."

Susan drew herself up to her full, tiny height. "I require clothes. You have a brother about my size, do you not?"

"Ay- No, Mistress Storm, yer uncle would have me hide." He struggled to straighten his clothing.

"And I will have it if you don't." she said firmly.

It took only a few more minutes convincing and some skillful wheedling but a small figure in trousers and cap left the barn where young Mistress Storm had entered.

At first, Susan wasn't sure Richard Reed had even noticed her tromping behind him through the mud- his lecture could have been given as well to the open air as to her, knee deep in sticky, cold mud. But then he took her wrist and pulled her up and out, continuing on without a pause in his words. Susan liked that. There was a freedom in the strides she was able to take without long dresses tangling her legs. There was a freedom in the mud on her face and Richard's lengthy discourse and the ache in her legs.

They went back to the manor, Susan sketching a swift bow and running off to the stables to splash cold water on her face, leaving the muddy clothes in a pile, absently wondering if Michael's brother were left nude before dashing back to her room and changing for dinner.

Richard said nothing over dinner of the boy that had accompanied him though he lectured Johnnie and her aunt and uncle to a confused stupor.

Every day for a week it continued thus, until Richard's last day before he returned to London Town. As they walked back towards the manor he stopped and sketched her a bow which she awkwardly mimicked after a brief, confused moment of reaching for the skirts she wasn't wearing to curtsey.

"Your company has made this week far more interesting." It was as close to a flowery compliment as Richard Reed was capable and Susan glowed.  


* * *

 

His name was Matthew Saunders and Susan didn't love him.

It was a good match. She'd been told that. Over and over again and she even knew it was true. He was a good man. A kind man. Rich and gentle and sweet-natured.

She didn't love him.

It didn't matter.

Johnnie had been livid, but as her wardship was still in the hands of their uncle, he had no control over it. The first Sunday after the banns were read, Johnnie killed a man. He never would tell her why, but he came home covered in blood and determinedly not crying, burying his face in her skirts.

He's always been hot-tempered. But he was also the boy to whom she'd been the only mother he remembered.

He'd evidently told the queen and Fury why, and she exiled him quietly. Equally quietly Sir Nicholas Fury had given him a slip of paper with one word on it.

 _Fantastick._

The ship was anchored in Portsmouth. It looked different than any other ship Susan had ever seen, few though they'd been. Johnnie had written to Reed and received a letter back signed Benjamin Grimm. It had been simple, to the point.

 _We'll be waiting._

Johnnie had been surprised. Susan had not.  


* * *

Susan Storm was twenty years old when she met Richard Reed for the second time. She'd dressed as a man on the ship, sharing a cabin with Johnnie. The crew would not have wanted a woman on board at all, let alone on such a journey- to the ends of the world. Johnnie knew, of course. Benjamin figured it out on the second week when he, Johnnie, and Susan played whist in the evenings as the light faded in red shadows across the wooden boards of the Fantastick. Susan was never sure if Reed knew or not. It was hard to tell what penetrated his fantastic brain and what was sloughed off as unimportant.

It didn't matter. She could feel the sun on her face, the wing at her back, and the spray of water soaking her skin when they went through rough seas. She was free.

Then there was the Saragasso Sea and everything changed.

She woke on an island, sand coating her body, and warm sun touching her back. She sat up, looking down to appraise herself. The sand had shaped itself to her skin. The water lapped over her legs. But that was all she could see. The sand and the water and not herself at all.

 

Susan Storm screamed.

Reed wrapped his arms around her three times soothing her as he said her name quietly for the first time, "Susan, shh. Sweet Susan, breathe."  


* * *

They traveled the world and Susan remembered it as the best days of her life. She heard songs about them as people forgot that it ever wasn't public knowledge that Susan Storm ran way from a marriage she didn't want. She was free in way she hadn't been since she was twelve years old and knee deep in mud.

They were in Persia when Reed kissed her for the first time; he missed. Unsurprising, since he couldn't see her, but it has still startled a laugh out of her and made him flush. She'd cupped his face and kissed him, breath warm and invisible skin soft as she pressed against him gently. She hadn't worn clothes since the Saragossa Sea.

They made love on the wooden billiards table in a home they were lent by a patron, the thin, green wool scratchy against her back. She tried not to laugh as he learned how to touch her without seeing aught. He learned her with all the intensity Richard Reed put into all study and Susan felt free.

She felt free as the air.  
 _  
And the last was a maiden so pale- So pale.... The last was a maiden so pale..._


End file.
